Loved Macs but had to switch to Windows in 1999. In 2010, given the Unix based OS and prominence of the iPhone I purchased an iMac. It's been an ongoing process to match the software and tweaks I have for Windows 7.

To keep things clean, I use the following notation,

* - Can be manually dropped into the system without an installer and can be made portable (not reliant on the Operating System). ~ - Semi-portable. Can be setup without installer but will set itself in the Operating System. 32-bit - Only 32-bit version exists.

Secure Delete - Look for product. Apple dropped because they can't claim to guarantee with new ssd drives. Built into OS, drag files into garbage, then hold down apple key and right click, select "Secure Empty Trash".

Avaste Free Edition - As of 2012 top ranking antivirus for my use (but I do not rely on on-demand checking). Downside is no scheduling but not intrusive.

Avira Free Edition - As of 2012 2nd top ranking antivirus + can do automatic scheduled scans. Downside is disabling on demand keeps on resetting in Windows. No longer using.

Essential Utilities

Better Snap Tool (App Store $2) - Get Windows 7 like snapping in addition to being able to use keyboard shortcuts to snap windows wherever you want. Also has loads of other features. Went through lots of tools like SizeUp before getting to this one. I use the following options,

Keyboard Shortcuts

CTRL-WinKey-Left = (this interferes with nudge for powerpoint) put window of left half - note this breaks Home of text doc shortcut on Mac (Winkey-Left is used by Mac OS for beginning of line)

CTRL-WinKey-Right = (this interferes with nudge for powerpoint) put window on right half - note breaks End of text doc shortcut on Mac

WinKey-Up = center on screen using custom "snap area" of x=480, y=115, w=1,600, h=1,280 and move snap area to bottom right beside trash, click colour and make snap area invisible - but it breaks moving up a folder

Araxis Merge 64-bit - Best diff tool I have ever found. (disable Ribbon Interface, check do not show splash window, add folder filter to ignore .svn folders and make the default encoding UTF-8 No BOM). If you have a Windows license you can use it on the Mac too. http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com/ is in beta but it also looks like a very good alternative if you did not buy Araxis yet.

VMWare Fusion - allows you to virtualize operating systems. If you do not know what this means you are missing out.

Fix Home and End Key

Yet to try. This absolutely drives me nuts as a programmer. Home should go to the beginning of the line and end to the end of the line. On the Mac OS home takes you to the beginning of a document and end to the end of a document.

Yes, you can use Apple Key left Arrow and Apple Key Right Arrow (but I override this to move my Windows). However, as a programmer using SHIFT to highlight it starts becoming awkward.

Jomic - Their revision history v0.9.9 shows compensation feature for splash pages. Needs Java, has a bad interface and it does not fix the page re-ordering.

ComicBookLover - tried it, does not fix the issue. I sent them an email, Nov 2011 asking them to fix this.

Control Multiple Systems

ShareMouse* - Looks better than Synergy. Took 5 minutes to setup... but when I tried, Oct 2011 still buggy.

Afloat - Keeps windows on Top

Afloat is a program that can keep your windows "afloat" on top of other windows. Mac OSX lacks this functionality and Afloat does a great job of keeping windows always on top. You can also play with transparency settings. What this program really does it install a SIMBL Plugin. If you want to uninstall it, simply locate /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins and remove it.

It doesn't work very well (rather its not that compatible) with OSX Lion. I find that it really only works with Chrome and a few other windows. Hopefully future updates will make it more compatible but for the programs it does work for, it does it well. You can press Control, ⌘ + A to toggle sticky window on or off. Control, ⌘ + PLUS or MINUS to change transparency on the fly.

Second Tier Essentail

Snagit - screen capture utility. Most used feature, autoscroll, which scrolls to capture all contents of a window.

Secure Your Data

KeePassX * - a central place to keep your important data with one master password or master key file. If you are using the Windows version at the same time, you will want to make sure to pick an older version of KeePass that matches KeePassX's data format. As of March 10, 2013 my version of KeePassX uses KeePass KDB (1.x).

Communication Utilities

Lacking here. What I'm looking for:

Terminal Manager as good as Putty Connection Manager but leveraging the existing Mac Terminal Program - would be nice to get putty functionality like right-click to paste and keep on top,

Make Bootable Mountain Lion Disk

Rejected Application

http://appzapper.com - I went to delete Transmit and it still left files in /Users/tinpham/Library/Application Support/Sparkle. Not impressed.

Evaluating and Searching

Any help and suggestions would be appreciated.

Editor like Notepad++

Notepad++ is the BEST general purpose fast loading editor to replace notepad that I have ever used. Unfortunately, it is built only for Windows. Here are the key features I use and looking to replicate on Mac OS X,

Fast load with drag and drop - remember this is supposed to be a Notepad replacement not a full IDE like Eclipse.

Box selection - this feature is really useful for parsing data in a pinch.

Mounting SSH as a Drive

Expand Drive - Is the best one out there right now for the Mac. As of Expand Drive 2.3.1 and Transmit 4.1.7 we found Transmit to be slow in comparison. Also your Expand Drive license works for both PC and Mac.

Comparative Analysis

Click here to expand...

Similar to Expand Drive - http://panic.com/transmit/ - but SLOW. Also have to right click to mount as it is not the default. Not impressed so far. But it does have a saving grace. There is an option to put it up on your upper right task menu and mount drives that way. For the mounting of drives, panic actually uses a open source software, macfuse.

Dec 15 - I've also tried Transmit 4.1.7 and it is still slow. At $34, I would not recommend using this. I also have had problems running MacFuse because as of right now, the 64-bit kernel is unsupported. There are hacks to get around it, but it hasn't worked for me so far. – Duncan